I Never Picked to be a Fundamentalist

I never chose to be a fundamentalist Christian.  There are people in my family that would object to this statement, and perhaps they should.  When I was 8.5 years of age I walked to the front of the church as the congregation sang “Just As I am,” and I made a confession of my sins.  But really, I was not overcome with the sense that my sins were so great that I needed to make things right, or risk eternal damnation as the consequences of my delay.  My baptism was no surprise at all.  My mother had come to church carrying a change of “tighty whities” and a bath towel.  My father had called the preacher the night before and requested that he be allowed to baptize me. 

And I was just shy of 9 years of age.  What sins had I committed?

I had one, of course.  I had discovered, a few months before, that my pee-pee would sometimes get stiff and sensitive.  I explored this an noticed I could make “it” stay stiff and erupt with a sort of joy and leaving behind a sticky mess.  No one had ever told me this happens to boys sometimes.  Nevertheless, I was sure, without being told, that this was “sinful.”  The pee-pee was obviously dirty.  You were not suppose to show yours around.  You had to wash your hands after you peed.  Obviously the penis was a wicked shameful part of my body.  Add to that this general sense in my family and in my church that pleasure was bad, it was clear that my stiffies were sinful.  I also knew that there was some sort of connection to this thrilling secret part of me, and girls.    I was aware of ‘boobies” and while I had no idea what was between a little girl’s legs, I was sure it was going to be wonderful.  Just thinking about boobies, panties, and bras could make my pee-pee move about, and stiffen.  I was pretty sure all this was sinful stuff and I needed to be baptized. 

I had the idea that baptism might be a little like the polio vaccine.  If I could just get baptized, I’d never get stiff again, I’d never play with my secret, and I would stop fantasizing about girls.

Now, at 64 years of age, I think I was following the script as intended. It seems to me that there was a push on young children to get baptized around the same time as they start to get erection breasts and menses.   Baptism was, according to the church of Christ, reserved for adult conversion, there were no baptized babies in the churches of Christ, and the earliest you could be baptized was after you reached the age of accountability.  As far as I can tell the age of accountability occurred around the same time as one’s puberty.

While I certainly said that I was a sinner, and that I wanted to be baptized for the forgiveness of my sins, I do not see that  as a real choice to be a fundamentalist.  I mean, it is not like I considered the Roman Catholic Church, or the Episcopal Church, or the Unitarian church and compared those groups to the churches of Christ and that I then came to my own free and independent decision to reject those other churches because the churches of Christ seemed closer to the truth God would have me follow.  I didn’t even compare the churches of Christ to other fundamentalist groups.  I didn’t go down a Baptist/churches of Christ check list and opt for one over the other.  I was baptized and counted as a member of the church of Christ because my parents were members of the church of Christ.  And my parents did not join the church of Christ after carefully considering the other options and coming to their free and independent decision to reject all other possible denominations.  They too were born to parents who were members of the churches of Christ.

My father’s father was also born to someone who was a member and preacher for the churches of Christ.  I suppose, had I the information, I would find that someone, way back did consider at least some other options and opted for the churches of Christ.  There are probably people today that leave one church for another and sometimes they pick the church of Christ.  I’m just saying it did not happen to me, or my parents, or my parents’ parents.

I am actually, just now, making those comparisons.  For a time I rejected God, because I found fundamentalist Christianity dependent on ignorance and wishful thinking.  You see, I was raised in the one, and only true church.  I was taught that the church of Christ was the ONLY church on earth that was compliant with the word of God and while no one in the church of Christ claims to be perfect, they do not question the truth of the scriptures as interpreted by the churches of Christ.  We had the right answers to every question, and while we were imperfect people, the Bible was perfect and the church of Christ had searched the scriptures and discovered the proper understanding of those scriptures, and any church that had a different interpretation was wrong and their membership would be spending eternity in a lack of fire where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and the worm is not consumed. 

If I lost my faith in the churches of Christ, well, there were no other choices.  There was nothing else to believe since I had lost my confidence in the answers supplied by the only one true church of Almighty God.  If the one true church was wrong, then I was done.  It has taken me a long time to see that there are no absolute answers, that the search for faith is always couched in approximations.  I have started to believe that religious faith has evolved just like biological organisms have evolved.    This blog is just a reflection of my search for faith.  I can no longer say I reject everything.  I also would not say I am open to anything.  What I hope is that I might be willing to let go of things I thought I knew in order to be open to truths I never dreamed were there.

A Review of: Faith & Doubt by John Ortberg

A lot of my recent reading has been on the subject of doubt.  After finishing The Atheist who Believes In God by Frank Schaeffer I moved on to a more organized approach by a well known Christian writer, John Ortberg.  

Mr. Ortberg’s work is far more focused and clearly he is a minister with a hope to help Christians who struggle with doubt.  The Book, Faith and Doubt makes it clear that if you have faith, you have doubt.  He goes so far as to say you cannot have faith and certainty.  Near the end of the work he talks about holding up his fist and asking people if they believe he has a twenty dollar bill in his hand.  At that point the people around him have no way of being certain what is in his hand.  Some of those on lookers will have faith that the minister has $20 in that fist, because he said he did and they have faith that a minister would not lie.  Some around the minister might be equally sure that the minister is lying.  Maybe they have known some ministers well, in their past and know not to trust them.  Then the Reverend Ortberg says to those who have faith in him, “I am now going to destroy your faith in me,” and he opens his hand and shows them what the fist contains.  You see, once you know something, once you have seen with your eyes, once you are absolutely certain, you no longer have any need for faith.

When it comes to the claims of the Bible, we cannot know for certain that the claims are true, just as we cannot know for certain that the claims are untrue.  We can have an opinion.  We can have a conviction.  We can believe so strongly that it feels like a fact, but in the end, honest thinking people know that we cannot know if the those Biblical stories are true, or untrue.

Another powerful point in the book Faith and Doubt is that there is a difference in faith and faithfulness.  The author gives an example of his marriage.  I have been married 42 years so I could identify with this example.  The author writes that on his wedding day he was 95% sure that he was marrying the right person.  He was almost totally sure that he was marrying for the right reasons, marrying the right person, and that his bride was almost totally sure as she approached their wedding day.  But almost sure, pretty darn sure, is not the same thing as being certain. beyond all doubt.  When you consider that about half of all marriages end in divorce and most people getting married also were pretty sure they were marrying the right person, well, you get the point.

But not being absolutely, beyond all doubt, 100% certain did not prevent the couple from taking their marriage vows.  They could pledge to love, honor, and care for one another in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, and they could promise to forsake all others without being 100% sure they were perfect for one another? 

HOW?

They could make promises to love one another forever, even when they were not 100% sure, because they were making a personal commitment to be faithful to one another.   

Being faithful to your spouse does not require you to be sure, it only requires you to intend to be faithful.  Intention fills the gap between being pretty sure and being unsure.  In a similar way, when we recite the Nicene Creed and we say that we believe in Christ who “came down from heaven,” or if we say we “believe in the resurrection of the body” when we actually have some doubts about that stuff, well, we can still say we believe it, if we are willing to fill in the space between pretty sure, and unsure with our faithful commitment to Christ.   

The author points out that not being absolutely certain, is not the same thing as having no reasons to believe.  Like getting married, our faith in the truth of some part of the Biblical story might be 95% sure with just a few elements of doubt. If you are honest you will have to admit that there are things that are unknowable on this side of death’s door.  After we pass through death’s door, if there is an afterlife, we may know that for sure, but we will have no way to communicate that certain knowledge to those still living.  If there is nothing on the other side of death’s door, the atheists will be right, but they will never know for certain that they are right, because they will be nothing but broken meat computers.

One rule of thumb that the author shared needs to be shared again, and as often as possible:  When something is UNKNOWABLE, then it is pointless to argue about it.  If there is a question that cannot be answered on this side of death’s door, then what we should do is not decided.  Don’t decided that God exists and all the promises of the Bible are true, and don’t decided that God does not exist, and that all the promises of the Bible are untrue.  Instead, choose to do what you can to enhance this life.  Nurture relationships.  Advocate for love.  Move forward with both the faith and the doubts you carry inside of yourself.

The author points out that when faith also contains doubt that those doubts motivate the doubter to keep looking for answers.  Doubts keep us from the hubris of certainty.  We won’t presume to do God’s work for God, we won’t judge, we won’t cut heads off those who believe God hates, we won’t shun those who think differently from us, we will allow God to be God, and we will be more willing to be disciples of Christ doing what Jesus did, loving others.

I am sure I have not done this book justice.  The author is a better writer than I am and he presents his views far better than I can, but I just want you to consider reading this book.  If you want to be a atheist then this is not the book for you.  If you happen to be a human, struggling with a desire for faith but having honest doubts and misgivings, then this well might be a perfect book for you to read.

Book Review

A Review of:  Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace by Frank Schaeffer 

I suppose I ordered this book for my Kindle, because the title caught my eye.  It seemed a contradiction.  Either you are a believer or you are not.  I thought, there can be no in-between . . . can there?

As I read the book I found that he was raised by fundamentalist parents, just as I was, and he started his life trying to be as good a Christian as his family wanted him to be.  That sounded like me.

And later, over time, Frank Schaeffer rebelled against that fundamental past.  I did that too.  Frank turned his back on fundamentalism, and that lead to a less certain life.

Frank calls himself an atheist, but he is an atheist that prays, goes to church, reads the Bible to his grandchildren, and he has been attending the Greek Orthodox Church for over 25 years.

Frank is a very interesting atheist.

I actually do not think he is an atheist.  This is just me contradicting what the author said about himself, but I think Frank Schaeffer is a believer who believes so differently about God now, that he knows his fundamentalist parents and their followers would call him an atheist now.  Frank believes in evolution.  Frank believes the Bible is a book written by inspired men who were not perfect and the document itself is not perfect.  Frank picks and chooses which parts of the Bible he will accept.  I believe Frank would even admit that sometimes he accepts parts of the Bible that he earlier did not accept.

There is a part where Frank talks about reading a children’s book of Greek myths.  His granddaughter would hear the wild stories and at the end of one myth his granddaughter would say, “That one really happened.”  At the end of another she would say, “That didn't happen.”  When Frank moved on to reading Bible stories to the child she did the same thing.  Some stores just sounded true, while others didn’t.  Frank talked about when he worked in the movie industry that he could tell when a script had too many writers.  One part would have a sound and direction to it and then the script would lose something.  Frank compared this to sound.  We all can tell the difference between a vibration of a violin string, and a shoe scraping in gravel.  Both or sounds but if you can hear, you can hear the difference between music and a noise. 

It was clear in this book that Frank was still smarting from the hurt of his fundamentalist past.  There is a passage where he asks what he would do if he were god and his grandchildren were various characters in the Bible.  Would any loving grandfather yell at a grandchild because they brought fruits and vegetables as an offering instead of meat?  Even if a grandchild was angry and said, ‘I hate you, I wish you were dead’ would any grandfather reject the grandchild and send them to be tortured for all eternity?  And if Frank the grandfather would not do such a thing to a child and Frank has imperfect love while God is pure distilled love, why would any of us think God would just his children so harshly?

Over all, this book was not really organized to provide a cohesive understanding of faith that contains doubt.  I don’t think this would not be a good book for a study group.  The writing goes off on tangents.  Parts of this read like a guy who just needs to vent.  Nevertheless, it makes an excellent point about faith.  We all live with a mix of faith and doubt.  When a tragic thing happens our faith can be shaken and tested.  Just a bad day, and problems finding a parking space can test our faith.  Fusses with our spouse can cause us to question our love and make us grumpy with God.  But we are not called to be certain.  We are not called to be sure.  We don’t have to make 100% on some test to be worthy of God.  We are called to be faithful and that faithfulness can, and does include our doubts.

WHAT ABOUT BELIEF?

What do I believe?  When my son Ryan came into our family I felt like I was blessed by God.  When I talked with someone who's baby had died in a tragic accident, I couldn't figure out what God was doing?  Where was He and how could he let this happen?  At best God is sending us mixed messages.

Sometimes I would get so angry about some wrong I would be angry at myself for bothering to believe in God.  I would tell myself that it is impossible to believe in ALL of God's traits at the same time.  

God is supposed to be:

1.  ALL knowing
2.  ALL powerful
3.  Everywhere at once  [omnipresent]
4.  Pure distilled LOVE
5.  and yet EVIL exists.

HOW can all 5 of those things be true at the same time.  I mean I could accept a loving God who wasn't all powerful.  Then I could accept that evil exists because God doesn't have the power to clobber and eliminate it.

Or I could accept that God is all powerful, and all knowing, but just not all that loving.  He has limits to what He tolerates and eventually he just gets exasperated and says, "Go to hell."

So I would struggle.  Do I believe in God, or not?

When I gave up on being a fundamentalist I felt a little better.  I was no longer expected to believe in a talking snake, like we read about in the Garden of Eden.  And I no longer had to accept a God who would place a wager with the Devil and allow Job's children to die just to test Job's faith.  

Was I an atheist then?  I thought maybe I was, since I certainly no longer accepted the 'Bible is inerrant' position I was raised to believe.  

But atheism has it's own certitudes, and the atheist beliefs are just as un-provable.  I trust science over myth, but God is not something that can be scientifically studied.  

I had a teacher in college that would say, If you can't measure it, you can't know anything about it.  Unless you can weigh something, or see how warm or cool it is, or measure it's length and width you can't know anything about it.  

So since God can't be sliced and stained, or put on a scale does that mean He does not exist?  That is what my teacher was telling me.  God is beyond or out side of the realm of things that can be proved, therefore there is no God.

Sometimes I want to believe, but science was telling me, if you can't measure it, you can't prove it is there, therefore, it isn't.  But it seemed like science was saying nothing really mattered, that sin was just an evolutionary myth developed by humans so we wouldn't eat our babies and the species would survive.  I want things to matter, for humans to have worth and value, and I know that is not a good enough reason to accept an unverifiable God, nevertheless, I am not a scientist and science was falling short for me.

I am starting to think it is wrong to believe anything on the grounds that we have insufficient evidence.    If you don't have the evidence to decide something, then what you should do is NOT Decide, don't pick, abstain, do not commit, opt for mystery, learn to live with your questions, refuse to be an affirm-er or a denier.  

Jesus said follow me, he did not say accept my arguments'

Jesus had his own doubts.  My God, why have you forsaken me?

What I am starting to realize is that  there are three kinds of belief.  

1.  One belief is what I say I believe.
2. One is what I think I believe,
3. But my core beliefs actually govern what I do.

Say a tightrope walker stretches a wire across Niagara Falls, and then he takes a wheel barrel filled with bricks and pushes it all the way across and back over Niagara Falls.  Then the tightrope walker addresses the crowds asking "Do you believe I can do that again?"  Yes yells the crowd.  The performer then asks, "Who here thinks I could put a man in this wheel barrel and push it across and back?"  Everyone believes this guy could do that, so every hand is raised.  Finally the wire walker says, "If you want to volunteer to be that man, keep your hand raised."  All the hands drop.  Would your hand stay up?

I said I believed this acrobat could wheel a man across Niagara Falls.  I thought I believed he could do it.

But it was only when I was called on to act upon my beliefs, it was only when I was asked to trust my life to this wire walker that I discovered my core belief.  I discovered that I did NOT believe wholly and without reservation in this wire walker.  I was NOT willing to trust my life to his skill.  I found out that my core belief is in gravity.  I had no doubt at all that if I were to fall from the wheel barrel that I would fall to my death.  

In this stupid parable, the wire walker could be science, or the tightrope walker could be God, but it seems I just don't believe enough to pick to trust eternity to science or to God,   My  core beliefs govern what I actually do.   

I can't swear that Jesus existed.  I think he did, and I think he does live, and I say the Nicene Creed and I proclaim that I believe in Jesus, but as I now know, there are degrees of belief.  I am seeking to know my core belief in Jesus.  I  know the story of Jesus, and I believe the truth in the story.  I  know that when things were very bad, Jesus expressed doubt, but what Jesus never did is compromise his core beliefs.  Jesus loved people, and helped people and valued people over the rules of the Bible.  Jesus violated the scriptures as it applied to the Sabbath Day. Jesus was absolutely sure God would be OK with him healing sick people on the Sabbath Day   Jesus was lead by his core beliefs and he still at times broke or bent the commandments from the Bible and believed that that was OK with God because the Sabbath was made for man, man was not made for the Sabbath.

If I had to pick I would rather be LIKE Jesus, or be OF Jesus rather than believe in the reported details of his life.   I want to have a set of core believes that are in harmony with Christ's core believes, and I want my Jesus compatible core beliefs to govern what I do.  I want my core believes to cause me to react with love and kindness.  I want to be helpful, and emphathic, and I want my trust of love to be so strong that it over comes all my other belief systems.